Prediction of diffusion coefficients in porous media using tortuosity factors based on interfacial areas

Determination of aqueous phase diffusion coefficients of solutes through porous media is essential for understanding and modeling contaminant transport. Prediction of diffusion coefficients in both saturated and unsaturated zones requires knowledge of tortuosity and constrictivity factors. No methods are available for the direct measurement of these factors, which are empirical in their definition. In this paper, a new definition for the tortuosity factor is proposed, as the real to ideal interfacial area ratio. We define the tortuosity factor for saturated porous media (tau5) as the ratio S/S(o) (specific surface of real porous medium to that of an idealized capillary bundle). For unsaturated media, tortuosity factor (tau(a)) is defined as a(aw)/a(aw),o (ratio of the specific air-water interfacial area of real and the corresponding idealized porous medium). This tortuosity factor is suitably measured using sorptive tracers (e.g., nitrogen adsorption method) for saturated media and interfacial tracers for unsaturated media. A model based on this new definition of tortuosity factors, termed the interfacial area ratio (IAR) model, is presented for the prediction of diffusion coefficients as a function of the degree of water saturation. Diffusion coefficients and diffusive resistances measured in a number of saturated and unsaturated granular porous media, for solutes in dilute aqueous solutions, agree well with the predictions of the IAR model. A comparison of permeability of saturated sands estimated based on tau(s) and the same based on the Kozeny-Carman equation confirm the usefulness of the tau(s) parameter as a measure of tortuosity.     

Modeling of two-phase flow in membranes and porous media in microgravity as applied to plant irrigation in space

In traditional applications in soil physics it is convention to scale porous media properties, such as hydraulic conductivity, soil water diffusivity, and capillary head, with the gravitational acceleration. In addition, the Richards equation for water flux in partially saturated porous media also contains a gravity term. With the plans to develop plant habitats in space, such as in the International Space Station, it becomes necessary to evaluate these properties and this equation under conditions of microgravitational acceleration. This article develops models for microgravity steady state two-phase flow, as found in irrigation systems, that addresses critical design issues. Conventional dimensionless groups in two-phase mathematical models are scaled with gravity, which must be assigned a value of zero for microgravity modeling. The use of these conventional solutions in microgravity, therefore, is not possible. This article therefore introduces new dimensionless groups for two-phase models. The microgravity models introduced here determined that in addition to porous media properties, important design factors for microgravity systems include applied water potential and the ratio of inner to outer radii for cylindrical and spherical porous media systems.     

Reconstruction of porous media using multiple-point statistics with data conditioning

The reconstruction of porous media is of great importance in predicting fluid transport properties, which are widely used in various fields such as catalysis, oil recovery, medicine and aging of building materials. The real three-dimensional structural data of porous media are helpful to describe the irregular topologic structures of porous media. By using multiple-point statistics (MPS) to extract the characteristics of real porous media acquired from micro computed tomography (micro-CT) scanning, the probabilities of structural characteristics of pore spaces are obtained first, and then reproduced in the reconstructed regions. One solution to overcome the anisotropy of training images is to use real 3D volume data as a training image (TI). The CPU cost and memory burden brought up by 3D simulations can be reduced greatly by selecting the optimal multiple-grid template size that is determined by the entropy of a TI. Moreover, both soft data and hard data are integrated in MPS simulation to improve the accuracy of reconstructed images. The variograms and permeabilities, computed by lattice Boltzmann method, of the reconstructed images and the target image obtained from real volume data are compared, showing that the structural characteristics of reconstructed porous media using our method are similar to those of real volume data.     

On boundary conditions in the lattice Boltzmann model for advection and anisotropic dispersion equation

A mirror-image method is proposed in this paper to solve the boundary conditions in the lattice Boltzmann model proposed by Zhang et al. [Adv. Water Resour. 25 (2002) 1] for the advection and anisotropic dispersion of solute transport in porous media. Three types of boundary are considered: prescribed concentration boundary, prescribed flux boundary and prescribed concentration-gradient boundary. The accuracy of the proposed method is verified against benchmark problems and finite difference method.     

An improved gray lattice Boltzmann model for simulating fluid flow in multi-scale porous media

A lattice Boltzmann (LB) model is proposed for simulating fluid flow in porous media by allowing the aggregates of finer-scale pores and solids to be treated as ‘equivalent media’. This model employs a partially bouncing-back scheme to mimic the resistance of each aggregate, represented as a gray node in the model, to the fluid flow. Like several other lattice Boltzmann models that take the same approach, which are collectively referred to as gray lattice Boltzmann (GLB) models in this paper, it introduces an extra model parameter, n_s, which represents a volume fraction of fluid particles to be bounced back by the solid phase rather than the volume fraction of the solid phase at each gray node. The proposed model is shown to conserve the mass even for heterogeneous media, while this model and that model of Walsh et al. (2009) [1], referred to the WBS model thereafter, are shown analytically to recover Darcy–Brinkman’s equations for homogenous and isotropic porous media where the effective viscosity and the permeability are related to n_s and the relaxation parameter of LB model. The key differences between these two models along with others are analyzed while their implications are highlighted. An attempt is made to rectify the misconception about the model parameter n_s being the volume fraction of the solid phase. Both models are then numerically verified against the analytical solutions for a set of homogenous porous models and compared each other for another two sets of heterogeneous porous models of practical importance. It is shown that the proposed model allows true no-slip boundary conditions to be incorporated with a significant effect on reducing errors that would otherwise heavily skew flow fields near solid walls. The proposed model is shown to be numerically more stable than the WBS model at solid walls and interfaces between two porous media. The causes to the instability in the latter case are examined. The link between these two GLB models and a generalized Navier–Stokes model [2] for heterogeneous but isotropic porous media are explored qualitatively. A procedure for estimating model parameter n_s is proposed.     

Pore-scale imbibition experiments in dry and prewetted porous media

Two-phase imbibition behavior of immiscible fluids was studied in dry and prewetted porous media using a laser-induced fluorescence technique. Imbibition was first investigated in two-dimensional (2-D) systems under conditions comparable to those for a study of drainage [Ovdat H, Berkowitz B. Pore-scale study of drainage displacement under combined capillary and gravity effects in index-matched porous media. Water Resources Research 2006;42:W06411. doi:10.1029/2005WR004553] in the capillary-dominated regime. The effect of initial wetting saturation (IWS) was then explored in 2-D and 3-D porous media under the combined effect of gravity, capillary and viscous forces, within and outside the capillary-dominated regime. Parameters that describe maximum vertical advance, volumetric fraction, total surface area and specific surface area of the invading fluid were used to quantify the behavior. Comparison of 2-D drainage and imbibition patterns demonstrates significant qualitative differences under analogous viscosity ratio, buoyancy number, and capillary number values. However, quantitative analyses show strong pore-scale similarities between these patterns. Invasion structures in 3-D, prewetted (IWS ≈ 8% of the pore volume) porous media are ramified, with lateral branching and regions containing trapped residual fluid. These structures are qualitatively and quantitatively different from the compact, branchless structures that develop in dry (IWS = 0) porous media.     

Generic boundary conditions for lattice Boltzmann models and their application to advection and anisotropic dispersion equations

We address a “multi-reflection” approach to model Dirichlet and Neumann time-dependent boundary conditions in lattice Boltzmann methods for arbitrarily shaped surfaces. The multi-reflection condition for an incoming population represents a linear combination of the known population solutions. The closure relations are first established for symmetric and anti-symmetric parts of the equilibrium functions, independently of the nature of the problem. The symmetric part is tuned to build second- and third-order accurate Dirichlet boundary conditions for the scalar function specified by the equilibrium distribution. The focus is on two approaches to advection and anisotropic-dispersion equations (AADE): the equilibrium technique when the coefficients of the expanded equilibrium functions match the coefficients of the transformed dispersion tensor, and the eigenvalue technique when the coefficients of the dispersion tensor are built as linear combinations of the eigenvalue functions associated with the link-type collision operator. As a particular local boundary technique, the “anti-bounce-back” condition is analyzed. The anti-symmetric part of the generic closure relation allows to specify normal flux conditions without inversion of the diffusion tensor. Normal and tangential constraints are derived for bounce-back and specular reflections. The bounce-back closure relation is released from the non-physical tangential flux restriction at leading orders. Solutions for the Poisson equation and for convection–diffusion equations are presented for isotropic/anisotropic configurations with specified Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions.     

Stochastic modeling of the permeability of randomly generated porous media

Permeability of porous media in subsurface environments is subject to potentially large uncertainties due to the heterogeneity of natural systems. In this study, a first-order reliability method (FORM) is combined with a lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) to estimate the permeability of randomly generated porous media. The proposed procedure provides an increased ease of addressing complex pore structures by employing LBM to model fluid flow, while inheriting the computational efficiency from FORM. Macroscale-equivalent permeability can thus be estimated with significantly reduced computational efforts, while maintaining a connection to the complex microscale fluid dynamics within a pore structure environment. Implemented on several randomly generated porous media domains, the proposed method provides 13–120 times the efficiency compared to Monte Carlo methods.     

致密砂岩水压瞬态致裂液化格子波尔兹曼及有限元数值研究

水压瞬态致裂液化在地应力测量、 地震破坏评估和机理研究、 油气(天然气、 页岩气)及地热资源开发等地学领域都具有重要的理论和应用价值。 自20世纪60年代至今在理论和实际应用方面取得了一些奠基性和开创性成果, 但鉴于问题复杂性, 瞬态致裂液化机理至今尚不清楚。 本研究应用格子波尔兹曼及有限元多孔介质流固耦合物理模型, 对地震波载荷作用下致密砂岩水压瞬态致裂液化过程进行数值模拟研究。 首先, 以鄂尔多斯盆地某油田延长组致密砂岩为例, 利用X射线CT断层成像技术, 应用基于量子力学第一性原理格子波尔兹曼方法, 建立致密砂岩数字岩芯模型。 进而, 推导格子波尔兹曼及有限元多孔介质流固耦合数值模型公式, 建立致密砂岩水压致裂液化物理模型。 最后, 应用地震波载荷边界和初始条件, 模拟瞬态致裂液化流固耦合过程, 讨论了地震波载荷幅值、 频率及作用时间对致密砂岩孔隙结构(孔隙度大小及连通性)、 致密砂岩破裂最大主应力之间关系, 得到了地震波作用下致密砂岩致裂液化准则。     

Chaotic advection at the pore scale: Mechanisms,upscaling and implications for macroscopic transport

The macroscopic spreading and mixing of solute plumes in saturated porous media is ultimately controlled by processes operating at the pore scale. Whilst the conventional picture of pore-scale mechanical dispersion and molecular diffusion leading to persistent hydrodynamic dispersion is well accepted, this paradigm is inherently two-dimensional (2D) in nature and neglects important three-dimensional (3D) phenomena. We discuss how the kinematics of steady 3D flow at the pore scale generate chaotic advection—involving exponential stretching and folding of fluid elements—the mechanisms by which it arises and implications of microscopic chaos for macroscopic dispersion and mixing. Prohibited in steady 2D flow due to topological constraints, these phenomena are ubiquitous due to the topological complexity inherent to all 3D porous media. Consequently 3D porous media flows generate profoundly different fluid deformation and mixing processes to those of 2D flow. The interplay of chaotic advection and broad transit time distributions can be incorporated into a continuous-time random walk (CTRW) framework to predict macroscopic solute mixing and spreading. We show how these results may be generalised to real porous architectures via a CTRW model of fluid deformation, leading to stochastic models of macroscopic dispersion and mixing which both honour the pore-scale kinematics and are directly conditioned on the pore-scale architecture.     

基于层状双孔介质的地震波反射和透射系数频散特性研究

本文研究了纵波垂直入射情况下两种介质分界面处的纵波反射和透射系数的频散特性,分界面上下两侧分别为层状双孔页岩介质和层状双孔砂岩介质.当纵波沿垂直于分界面的方向传播至分界面处时,会在上层双孔介质中产生三类反射纵波,在下层双孔介质中产生三类透射纵波.基于层状双孔介质的特性,给出了分界面处的六个边界条件.根据层状双孔介质的波动方程,利用平面波分析得到了纵波的反射和透射系数.结果表明：当多孔介质中存在流体时,纵波的反射和透射系数与频率相关,即存在频散现象.波致流体流动是造成纵波反射和透射系数频散的主要原因.此外,结果还表明局部流体流动引起地震频带内反射和透射系数的频散,宏观Biot流引起超声频带内反射和透射系数的频散.本文同时对岩石参数对反射和透射系数频散曲线的影响进行了研究.     

Immiscible two-phase fluid flows in deformable porous media

Macroscopic differential equations of mass and momentum balance for two immiscible fluids in a deformable porous medium are derived in an Eulerian framework using the continuum theory of mixtures. After inclusion of constitutive relationships, the resulting momentum balance equations feature terms characterizing the coupling among the fluid phases and the solid matrix caused by their relative accelerations. These terms, which imply a number of interesting phenomena, do not appear in current hydrologic models of subsurface multiphase flow. Our equations of momentum balance are shown to reduce to the Berryman–Thigpen–Chen model of bulk elastic wave propagation through unsaturated porous media after simplification (e.g., isothermal conditions, neglect of gravity, etc.) and under the assumption of constant volume fractions and material densities. When specialized to the case of a porous medium containing a single fluid and an elastic solid, our momentum balance equations reduce to the well-known Biot model of poroelasticity. We also show that mass balance alone is sufficient to derive the Biot model stress–strain relations, provided that a closure condition for porosity change suggested by de la Cruz and Spanos is invoked. Finally, a relation between elastic parameters and inertial coupling coefficients is derived that permits the partial differential equations of the Biot model to be decoupled into a telegraph equation and a wave equation whose respective dependent variables are two different linear combinations of the dilatations of the solid and the fluid.     

含黏性流体孔隙介质分界面上反透射系数特征研究

地下岩石由岩石骨架和孔隙流体组成,通常流体含黏性.地震波在地下介质中传播时受岩石骨架和黏性流体的影响会呈现出复杂的变化.本文将流、固体位移和应力连续作为边界条件,推导出含黏性流体孔隙介质分界面上反透射系数方程;通过建立上层为饱油、下层为饱盐水的砂岩孔隙介质模型,开展反透射系数特征研究,分别分析不同频率、不同黏滞系数条件下,含黏性流体孔隙介质分界面上反透射系数随入射角的变化.研究表明,孔隙介质分界面上和等效介质分界面上的反透射系数分别随入射角的变化趋势基本一致,说明方程推导和数值计算的正确性;快纵波反透射系数受频率、流体黏性的影响较小,而快横波反透射系数在一定入射角范围内受频率、流体黏性的影响比较大;由于黏性孔隙流体的作用,慢纵波和慢横波的反透射系数受入射角、频率及流体黏性的影响都很大.     

Magnetic resonance microscopy of biofouling induced scale dependent transport in porous media

Non-invasive magnetic resonance microscopy (MRM) methods are applied to study biofouling of a homogeneous model porous media. MRM of the biofilm biomass using magnetic relaxation weighting shows the heterogeneous nature of the spatial distribution of the biomass as a function of growth. Spatially resolved MRM velocity maps indicate a strong variation in the pore scale velocity as a function of biofilm growth. The hydrodynamic dispersion dynamics for flow through the porous media is quantitatively characterized using a pulsed gradient spin echo technique to measure the propagator of the motion. The propagator indicates a transition in transport dynamics from a Gaussian normal diffusion process following a normal advection diffusion equation to anomalous transport as a function of biofilm growth. Continuous time random walk models resulting in a time fractional advection diffusion equation are shown to model the transition from normal to anomalous transport in the context of a conceptual model for the biofouling. The initially homogeneous porous media is transformed into a more complex heterogeneous porous media by the biofilm growth.     

Direct numerical simulation of pore-scale flow in a bead pack: Comparison with magnetic resonance imaging observations

A significant body of current research is aimed at developing methods for numerical simulation of flow and transport in porous media that explicitly resolve complex pore and solid geometries, and at utilizing such models to study the relationships between fundamental pore-scale processes and macroscopic manifestations at larger (i.e., Darcy) scales. A number of different numerical methods for pore-scale simulation have been developed, and have been extensively tested and validated for simplified geometries. However, validation of pore-scale simulations of fluid velocity for complex, three-dimensional (3D) pore geometries that are representative of natural porous media is challenging due to our limited ability to measure pore-scale velocity in such systems. Recent advances in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) offer the opportunity to measure not only the pore geometry, but also local fluid velocities under steady-state flow conditions in 3D and with high spatial resolution. In this paper, we present a 3D velocity field measured at sub-pore resolution (tens of micrometers) over a centimeter-scale 3D domain using MRI methods. We have utilized the measured pore geometry to perform 3D simulations of Navier–Stokes flow over the same domain using direct numerical simulation techniques. We present a comparison of the numerical simulation results with the measured velocity field. It is shown that the numerical results match the observed velocity patterns well overall except for a variance and small systematic scaling which can be attributed to the known experimental uncertainty in the MRI measurements. The comparisons presented here provide strong validation of the pore-scale simulation methods and new insights for interpretation of uncertainty in MRI measurements of pore-scale velocity. This study also provides a potential benchmark for future comparison of other pore-scale simulation methods. © 2012 Elsevier Science. All rights reserved.     

Hierarchical simulator of biofilm growth and dynamics in granular porous materials

A new simulator is developed for the prediction of the rate and pattern of growth of biofilms in granular porous media. The biofilm is considered as a heterogeneous porous material that exhibits a hierarchy of length scales. An effective-medium model is used to calculate the local hydraulic permeability and diffusion coefficient in the biofilm, as functions of the local geometric and physicochemical properties. The Navier–Stokes equations and the Brinkman equation are solved numerically to determine the velocity and pressure fields within the pore space and the biofilm, respectively. Biofilm fragments become detached if they are exposed to shear stress higher than a critical value. The detached fragments re-enter into the fluid stream and move within the pore space until they exit from the system or become reattached to downstream grain or biofilm surfaces. A Lagrangian-type simulation is used to determine the trajectories of detached fragments. The spatiotemporal distributions of a carbon source, an electron acceptor and a cell-to-cell signaling molecule are determined from the numerical solution of the governing convection–diffusion–reaction equations. The simulator incorporates growth and apoptosis kinetics for the bacterial cells and production and lysis kinetics for the EPS. The specific growth rate of active bacterial cells depends on the local concentrations of nutrients, mechanical stresses, and a quorum sensing mechanism. Growth-induced deformation of the biofilms is implemented with a cellular automaton approach. In this work, the spatiotemporal evolution of biofilms in the pore space of a 2D granular medium is simulated under high flow rate and nutrient-rich conditions. Transient changes in the pore geometry caused by biofilm growth lead to the formation of preferential flowpaths within the granular porous medium. The decrease of permeability caused by clogging of the porous medium is calculated and is found to be in qualitative agreement with published experimental results.     

Equilibrium-type and link-type lattice Boltzmann models for generic advection and anisotropic-dispersion equation

We extend lattice Boltzmann (LB) methods to advection and anisotropic-dispersion equations (AADE). LB methods are advocated for the exactness of their conservation laws, the handling of different length and time scales for flow/transport problems, their locality and extreme simplicity. Their extension to anisotropic collision operators (L-model) and anisotropic equilibrium distributions (E-model) allows to apply them to generic diffusion forms. The AADE in a conventional form can be solved by the L-model. Based on a link-type collision operator, the L-model specifies the coefficients of the symmetric diffusion tensor as linear combination of its eigenvalue functions. For any type of collision operator, the E-model constructs the coefficients of the transformed diffusion tensors from linear combinations of the relevant equilibrium projections. The model is able to eliminate the second order tensor of its numerical diffusion. Both models rely on mass conserving equilibrium functions and may enhance the accuracy and stability of the isotropic convection–diffusion LB models.The link basis is introduced as an alternative to a polynomial collision basis. They coincide for one particular eigenvalue configuration, the two-relaxation-time (TRT) collision operator, suitable for both mass and momentum conservation laws. TRT operator is equivalent to the BGK collision in simplicity but the additional collision freedom relates it to multiple-relaxation-times (MRT) models. “Optimal convection” and “optimal diffusion” eigenvalue solutions for the TRT E-model allow to remove next order corrections to AADE. Numerical results confirm the Chapman–Enskog and dispersion analysis.     

Accuracy of numerical simulations of contaminant transport in heterogeneous aquifers: A comparative study

This work deals with a comparison of different numerical schemes for the simulation of contaminant transport in heterogeneous porous media. The numerical methods under consideration are Galerkin finite element (GFE), finite volume (FV), and mixed hybrid finite element (MHFE). Concerning the GFE we use linear and quadratic finite elements with and without upwind stabilization. Besides the classical MHFE a new and an upwind scheme are tested. We consider higher order finite volume schemes as well as two time discretization methods: backward Euler (BE) and the second order backward differentiation formula BDF (2). It is well known that numerical (or artificial) diffusion may cause large errors. Moreover, when the Péclet number is large, a numerical code without some stabilising techniques produces oscillating solutions. Upwind schemes increase the stability but show more numerical diffusion. In this paper we quantify the numerical diffusion for the different discretization schemes and its dependency on the Péclet number. We consider an academic example and a realistic simulation of solute transport in heterogeneous aquifer. In the latter case, the stochastic estimates used as reference were obtained with global random walk (GRW) simulations, free of numerical diffusion. The results presented can be used by researchers to test their numerical schemes and stabilization techniques for simulation of contaminant transport in groundwater.     

岩石物理的理论模拟和数值实验新方法

当代物理实验科学和计算机科学技术的巨大进步为岩石物理的理论和实验研究开辟了新的领域.在细胞自动机基础上发展起来的格子气自动机和格子玻尔滋曼方法就是这种技术进步的产物.本文讨论了格子气自动机的发展及其应用于研究多孔岩石微观孔隙结构对宏观导电特性影响的新方法. 我们开发的模拟多孔岩石导电特性的数值实验新方法，提供了一种可深入到从微观孔隙结构这个尺度上来考察具有复杂孔隙结构的，孔隙度小于10%的低孔、低渗岩石的宏观导电特性及其影响因素.研究表明:Archie 系数m,n并不是传统上的意义，研究各种不同条件下F-、I-Sw关系，结果显示非阿尔奇现象与孔隙介质中孔隙、骨架和流体的混合导电网络有关，得出新的饱和度计算公式.同时还研究了泥质含量和分布、电阻率各向异性对宏观导电特性的影响，提出适用于电阻率各向异性地层的F-、I-Sw的关系.本文最后探讨了应用格子气自动机和格子玻尔滋曼方法进行岩心渗流和核磁共振数值实验的新方法及其发展前景.